-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Today we are in Genesis, Genesis 31.
00:42 We’re going to be going through 13 verses here and looking at what they say at the Word of God and this should help us understand some great principles in the Bible that we can apply to our lives immediately. And the Bible is two sections, it has two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament, but it’s really one book, Amen. It’s one book and it’s all about Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and it really points to so many important facets of living life, living as a Christian.
01:15 The Bible, sometimes you might have heard, it’s called Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. You know, the idea is we are very blessed to have it, we should use it, we should live by it, and it’ll help us. And here in Genesis 31`:1-3, we see some key life-living examples that many people may gloss over if they don’t look carefully.
01:39 So Genesis 31, I’m just gonna read a few verses and I’ll stop and then give some context. Genesis 31, verse 1, And he heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, Jacob, hath taken away all that was our father’s, and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this glory. And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, or the look on his face, and behold, it was not toward him as before.
02:04 And the Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee. So in the first three verses of Genesis 31, what do we have happening? We have Jacob, and Jacob is the son of Isaac. Isaac is the son of Abraham, right? So not too off from father Abraham, Jacob had been sent to the land over there to marry a relative of his father, because he did not want Jacob marrying a Canaanite woman like Esau had done.
02:41 So what do we have here? We have him going off, the trickster Jacob, who had tricked, so to speak, tricked Esau out of his birthright over a bowl of soup, had stolen the blessing that the eldest should have received.
02:54 Now he gets tricked by Laban, and he’s been really manipulated by Laban for 20 years, and he’s going through all kinds of hassles, and it’s the worst kind of hassle because he’s in love with Laban’s daughter, Rachel, and so he’s there for seven years, and then he ends up getting tricked and marrying Leah, and he’s there for seven more years, and then Laban gives him Rachel, but says, please, I see you’re a man of God, and God is blessing you, please don’t leave,
03:20 and so he’s manipulated, he’s tricked, he’s brought through a lot of hardships there, and he can tell that Laban keeps trying to trick him, and the time had come for him to leave, and the Lord speaks to him and says, return unto theland of thy fathers and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee.
03:39 You know, sometimes when we’re going through something, maybe a hard situation, maybe we’re being manipulated by someone, maybe we’re in a battle of some kind, maybe we’re in a struggle, God may convict us to do something, and we see that Jacob does not wait, he goes ahead and he does it right away, and we, I believe as Christians, oftentimes we’ll question God, and we’ll look for more of a sign from God, and we’ll kind of debate about it, and look, if it’s really from God, and God convicts us, then we need to move, and God’s going to allow us to see evidence in our life that’s going to allow us to move.
04:17 We see here in Genesis 31, it starts off with, and he, being Jacob, heard the words of Laban’s sons, okay, so Laban’s natural-born sons, not his son-in-law like Jacob, but his natural-born sons, saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father’s, and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this glory.
04:41 So the sons are jealous of him, and Jacob could see the countenance or the look on Laban’s face, and so Laban, again, he is the father of the two women, Leah and Rachel, that he married, and he could see the look, and it’s not the same look that it used to be, and so they’re probably getting a little sick and tired of Jacob being so blessed by God, and being so richly blessed by God, and sometimes them, even though they keep trying to connive and get the gain, they keep losing the gain,
05:07 and so what that is, in a way, I believe it’s God’s providence that allows Jacob to kind of wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak, to wake up and see, hey, maybe I’m not as welcome here as before, hey, maybe things aren’t going to be as cordial as they have been, maybe they’re going to get worse,
05:24 and so the Lord plainly says to him, return to your land, to your father’s, you know, get out of there, go back to Canaan, but in not just speaking it, the Lord also shows him through other people what’s going on, and when we look around at our circumstances, as we face battles, and as we feel convicted by the Lord to do something, the people around us can help reinforce what God is communicating to us,
05:48 and God will use other people in circumstances, and again, especially if it’s people that are unaware of what God’s convicting you to do, and they’re all kind of communicating the same thing to you, and the Lord is convicting you to do it, now you really know it’s of God, and here’s what we need to understand.
06:03 For the last 20 years, Jacob, who basically grew up now in this land, and had many children in this land, and had two wives, two concubines, so at least four there, women in his life in this land, had gained much in this land, he’s now going to look at immediately getting up and getting out of there, and so that’s not going to be convenient, it’s not going to be easy, following God is always right, and it’s always fruitful, no matter how scary it might look at the time.
06:31 Sometimes the Lord calls us to do things that seem pretty frightening, and I remember when I was praying about the radio ministry, the Lord had convicted me to get involved in it, and I was not necessarily putting it off, but I was thinking, oh well, maybe that’s just me, you know, thinking that way, being in the media world or something,
06:50 but the Lord kept tugging at my heart about it, and it was a little frightening to start, but as I took that first, and second, and third step, I realized that there was reinforcement there, it’s what God wanted me to do, it’s what God called me to do, and it’s bearing fruit, Amen.
07:04 So that’s a simple example, but what is the Lord calling you to do? What has the Lord put on your heart? What signs and circumstances is God using in your life to kind of communicate that, or kind of usher you along? You know, we’re called sheep in the Bible, and sometimes you’ll get a stubborn sheep, and that sheep doesn’t really want to move, or doesn’t want to go where you want it to go, and I’ve never owned sheep, but as I understand, sheep kind of like to wander around, kind of aimlessly, oh this looks good over here, oh this looks good over there. I drive by a pasture full of sheep almost every day, taking our oldest to school, and again, they’re just kind of here, there, and everywhere, and so maybe some of us are here, there, and everywhere, and God wants to guide us down a certain path, and he’s gonna have to kind of prod us, and convict us, and he’ll use others in our lives to do so.
07:49 Let’s continue on in Genesis 31 verse 4, and Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock, and said unto them, I see your father’s countenance, or the look on his face, and that it is not toward me as before, but the God of my father hath been with me, and you know that with all my power I have served your father, and your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times,
08:14 but God suffereth, suffered him not to hurt me. Let’s see here, make sure I’m stopping at the right place, so we see, I am stopping at the right place, so we see here that the Lord won’t leave us without help, so first we see a call to Jacob, a conviction on Jacob that he needs to leave, we then see that there are others that are helping reinforce that conviction, okay, because the natural-born sons are jealous, and the look has changed on his boss’s face, for lack of a better word, his father-in-law, but his boss’s face, and so we see the surroundings are convicting us,
08:51 God’s convicting us, and then we see it’s even though not easy, it’s important to do, and now here we see the help come in, that you know, God uses these circumstances in a way that can help others understand the need as well to help join you on that journey, and so sometimes you’ll talk to somebody, maybe the Lord’s convicting you to do something, and you’ll talk to someone, and it’s like they already know what you’re gonna say,
09:14 because the Lord is impressed upon them in some way, and that could be discernment, that they could also see what you’re seeing, that could be through many different ways, I mean the Lord’s ways are so much higher than our ways, but I believe this is true, not just then in Genesis 31, but today, God will work in the hearts of those intended to help you, so that your move or your action that you’re taking makes more sense to both you and them,
09:39 I really believe that, I mean, I’ve heard people say this too, and I don’t remember the exact quote, but something like, you know, if God’s really in it, we don’t have to make a sales pitch, we don’t have to convince people sometimes of doing what is right, you know, and me being in marketing and stuff,
09:56especially if I’m talking to Sue, my wife, I’m cognizant of that, sometimes I’ll tell her, okay honey, that’s my sales pitch, or that’s what I’m thinking, you take with it what you think, or what do you think, or am I in my way off, you know, because I don’t want to convince someone of something that God doesn’t want me to do,
10:13 I want God to impress on that person enough that they are naturally on the same page, or if they’re not, that they put me in my place, which of course she has no problem doing,
10:22 but God will work in the hearts of those intended to help you, so that your move makes sense to both you and them, we’re looking at bringing in some foster children into the home, we’ve talked about it for years, but now just seems to be the time, and that’s a very difficult conversation to have with your family, because you’re bringing someone new into the household, and there’s always a problem in a house,
10:41 you know, that if you have a family, you have a house, there’s always problems, there’s always problems here, like there’s always problems everywhere, there was never a good time to say, okay, let’s bring some strange kids in here, you know, and we’ll see how that goes, but as I talked to my wife about that, it was like she was already thinking the same way, and
11:00 God had prepared her heart, and I believed that, because I kept telling her, we’re not gonna do it unless we’re on board together as a family, and in my mind I’m thinking of this godly principle, that the Lord won’t leave us without help, and then we see here something interesting that Jacob mentions here
11:15 in Genesis 31, and it’s in verse 7, let’s see here, and your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times, but God suffered him not to hurt me, amen, not to hurt him, and so we see that God had protected Jacob from being hurt,
11:32 even though this guy Laban kept trying to change his wages over and over again, or he did change his wages over and over again, and then let’s see here what happens,
11:41 verse 8, if he said thus, the speckled shall be thy wages, then all the cattle bare speckled, and if he said thus, the ringstock shall be that higher, then bare all the cattle ringstocked, that thus God had taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me,
11:56 that’s verse 9, and so what, what, you have to think of this time, okay, what was valuable in a time, Bible times, time of Jacob, what was valuable then, agricultural resources, so literally, seeds, you’ll read later on in Genesis, that Joseph gives his brothers and his family seeds to plant to sow, so they can grow things, you can go to Dollar Tree and get a bag of seeds for a dollar,
12:19 I think, you know, you can go to Walmart, get seeds for, for very little, but back then seeds were very valuable, because that was a crop that you could then grow and eat, and also trade and sell, water was very valuable back then, a well would be very valuable, we’ll get to that in a little bit, but water was very valuable back then, today we take water for granted, right,
12:37 you just turn on the tap, you don’t think much about it, and cattle, so cattle was a sign of wealth, you know, Job, right, speaking of all the cattle that Job had, and you go through the book of Job and starts inventorying a lot of his cattle and his livestock, you know, and look, cattle is still very valuable today, you can quantify it,
12:56 you can look at what the market rate is for, for a cow or a pig or whatever it is, so you can say cattle is valuable today, but back then it was really a way to count it for wealth, and what we see here is a very interesting, interesting principle, that as Laban tried to trick Jacob, the man of God, amen, who later becomes Israel, literally the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, right, the grandson of Abraham, right, as God tries to trick Jacob, or not God, if as Laban tries to trick Jacob, God blesses Jacob more and more,
13:31 and so we see, you know, these types of livestock, thus if he said the speckled shall be thy wages, then all the cattle bearers speckled, and if he said the ring stock shall be that higher, then bear all the cattle ring stocked, and so we see that God was blessing, was that anything Jacob did? No, other than believing on God.
13:51 Friend, do you believe in God today? That’s all he’s asking you to do is believe.
13:56 I thank you so much for listening to this first part of a several-part message on Genesis 31. Tune in next time as we continue our study in the book of Genesis. Thank you so much for joining me.
14:06 Take care, God bless, and Amen.